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Sitemaps: Google, MSN and Yahoo unite
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Sitemaps are the easiest way for webmasters to tell search engines about the content of their website. A sitemap can either be for site visitors' benefit, in which case an HTML or similar file is created or for the search engines in which case an XML needs to be made. This XML file contains information about each page on the site - the URL, how important the page is relative to the other site pages, when the page was last updated and how often it usually changes.
By providing this information, search engines are able to crawl your site more effectively. There are still no guarantees that your pages will be included though!
A new protocol "Sitemap 0.90" standardises the way that sitemap information is presented, so rather than having sitemap.xml for Google, URLlist.txt for Yahoo! etc... search engines will support the one format. Google, Yahoo! and MSN have all agreed to support this protocol.
I still recommend GSiteCrawler for creating your sitemap - it's simple to use and even automates uploading your newly created sitemap to your website and pinging Google Sitemaps!
Labels: linking, searchengines, seo
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